Landscape material not height blended correctly

I’ve read a massive amount of conversations regarding the landscape material blending, but I still can’t figure out what is the cause of blackness. I have tried it by making zero layer grass texture AlphaBlended (example screenshot) and as HeightBlended. Both are displayed wrong, but HeightBlend had less artifacting as it rendered the zero layer at least but had black splots where layers connected (very popular error on other people’s issues)

From some of the comments I’ve heard that it’s because there’s a ZERO blend value on the terrain but for me painting everything over with zero layer material didn’t solve it at all.

I have noticed that if I delete my second layer (the rocky road part) it will render and blend zero (grass) and first (dirt) layers correctly. I also read that UE 4.5 didn’t support very many textures, so I had heightmap put in to normal map A channel to remove some textures, but that had no effect. I updated to 4.6 preview to see if it fixes it, but that also didn’t affect it in anyway (though I believe 4.6 was updated with bigger texture support)

I’m not sure where the issue is and it could very well be extremely tiny…

Screenshot of how it looks in editor:

Screenshot of the simple material tree:

Hi ,

Try covering the entire landscape section with one of your layers until all black is gone, then begin adding layers. Please let me know if this works for you.

Hello ,

Here is a gif showing what is happening when I cover the terrain with layer 0, then paint in layer 1 (still working) and then paint in layer 2 (and layer 0 disappears). Then paint away layer 2 and it fixes itself.

The gif is fairly big and bad quality, but shows pretty well what I did. I’m using 4.6 preview on the gif, but same happened on 4.5 version.

Imgur (.gifv wasn’t supported as image link, so it’s just link now)

Hi ,

Ok so as soon as you started adding a second layer is when the landscape blackened. What happens if you use vectors instead of textures. For instance, instead of your textures, apply a const 3 vector for each of your layers and see if you get the same thing.

Hello ,

Yes, the same thing happens. Of course the layer blend is still the same (with values as seen in the second screenshot of the question)

Have you been able to see this in a clean project with no additional content? I attempted to reproduce this but thus far have been unsuccessful.

I just made a new and empty project, but I still get the same issue.

Here is a screenshot of a fresh project with same setup and problem, dxdiag.txt if needed, and zipped project folder:

[link text][1]

[link text][2]

The black square in this image, was it black initially? If so then this is expected behavior as the material has no data to start with (your setup does not have an initial material value to be initialized when the material first appears, only materials to be painted on in layers). Does this black paint appear before you get started or is it only appearing after you have already been painting?

Everything was blue initially (first layer). Then I painted everything again with blue (just in case, was suggested earlier), then I painted pink stripe through both top squares. It still worked at this point (top right corner), then I drew green stripe through left squares. The bottom left still works (only has blue at bottom, green over it), BUT the square which contains blue base, green and pink over it, loses the blue base.

If I now went back and painted away either pink or green from the square, it would work again.

edit: By initially I mean first time after the new material has finished rendering shaders.

Ok I have good news. This is a known issue that does occur at times. Having said that, there is a workaround. Take one of your other layers and crank the tool strength up to maximum. Paint over your entire landscape with it. Then try painting on that. The black squares will continue to appear but paint over them until the whole landscape is one solid color. Then try painting on top of that. Please let me know if after following these steps the black splotches still appear.

I don’t quite understand what you are suggesting. I tried painting whole terrain with different layer (than layer 0) and then painting over it but layer 0 broke whenever I drew more than one height layer over it.

IF however I followed your suggestion (as I understood it) I was able to fix the terrain issue when I went against the Landscape material guide. The Landscape guide ( [link text][1] ) suggests setup is to use LB_AlphaBlend, but infact if you use LB_HeightBlend (const height 1.0) the layers draw (mostly) correctly. If you use LB_HeightBlend with const height 0.0 you will get black splots. If you use LB_AlphaBlend like the tutorial tells you to, the lowest layer will stop rendering completely when drawing multiple layers.

This is the final setup that worked:

I want to try one more thing. Try the second setup in the middle of that material guide (under the lable “Using Landscape Layer Weight Nodes”), using the landscape weight blended layers instead of the single layer blend node. Do you get the same error when using this other style?

Hi ,

We have not heard from you in quite some time. I am marking this thread as answered for tracking purposes. If you are still experiencing this error, please comment with the requested information.

I am having this same problem. Is there a fix for this issue yet? Very annoying…

Hi jrapczak,

Can you show me your material setup? Additionally what specifically is occurring when you paint? Additionally, what version of the editor are you using?

Does anyone have a solid fix for this yet? I’ve tried everything I’ve read online and its still got holes

Hi ,

What steps are you taking to reproduce this on your end? Any information that would allow me to recreate this effect could go a long way towards getting a bug report in and a fix implemented.